


Hard Habits

by Amethyst97Skye



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Desire Demons (Dragon Age), Despair Demons (Dragon Age), Fade Spirits, Gen, No Plot/Plotless, Sorry Not Sorry, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 17:21:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13931727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amethyst97Skye/pseuds/Amethyst97Skye
Summary: "Cole, say something interesting." - BlackwallWhat if Cole had said something interesting? What if Cole said something interesting about the Inquisitor? Sometimes hard habits are best left unbroken.





	Hard Habits

She never rested easy, was always active, simulating both her body and mind in one manner or another.

The habit of doing nothing was hard won. At the appointed time, she would stop. Stop moving and thinking and all things associated. Life would wind down like a leaf twirling in the air, or water running down a mountain, or a flower blossoming, opening its arms, its eyes only when it was ready. When it was time.

For that time, at that moment, she just was, her mind on nothing and floating nowhere, her body does nothing more than simply being, breathing.

Tonight – tomorrow – today – yesterday. The world slipped away.

She was not active then, her body asleep, her consciousness flowing wherever it felt it needed to be, the reasons unknown to her, the locations remaining mysteries unseen.

The first time they were fleshed out, taking on a form she could hear and see and smell and touch and taste, she was no longer nowhere doing nothing. She was everywhere doing everything. Equal parts delighted and terrified, she fled with fervour and returned unreluctantly.

Time passed in its quiet way, the worlds separate, silent as they stood side by side, vying for control of a vessel destined to be torn in two. One reality faded into the other, and it came sooner than expected, the time when she cannot decide or discern what or where or when or why she is.

That is the day she does not wake, the day her hard-won habit of doing nothing backfires. She did it so she could, every day, do everything she ever needed to do. She does not know that what she does and what she does do has no meaning. When she sits still, she remains in motion, never stopping but always resting. When she steals her own thoughts, there is no thinking involved, not as she thought of it before, but now she thinks without thinking because those thoughts are not her own.

They belong to those that came before, those that she now considers her own, and those that came after. She in linked to two halves of something that wants to be whole, but to reunite them would only tear them further apart.

This fading from one side to the other becomes as natural as breathing was once, not instinctual or intelligible – she does not know she does this, crossing boundaries that would, otherwise, remain uncrossed – because she is not the only one both less and more than they themselves once were.

It is in these mindlessly motivated wanderings that she finds him. He is neither here nor there, asleep in body but awake in mind, something she never experienced before. The words to tell him this do not exist, but her enthusiasm makes him smile, conjuring a bubble inside of him, a glowing aura she can embody. Now there is a word for what she is.

Happiness.

She spreads herself far and wide, jumping back and forth between before – who forget the past because it is just a feeling – and after – some of which remember because there are a few who live in the future, stepping from one present to another, though they misstep awfully often.

Over time, she finds more bubbles, approaches and pops them, pocketing their auras, their aromas, to share with the few and far between when they return. Once, they were many, encompassing all. Now there are almost none, and as she looks after and looks before, she finds them both blurred. The bubbles are harder to see, harder to pop, the pockets unravel, and their scent withers and dies, decaying inside her. It is a hollow feeling, one she shares until she finds its name.

Despair.

New names come to her, then, because Happiness is weakly rare and Despair is powerfully common. Some sit and stand and walk and talk to her. Others hiss and spit and bite and fight. It takes time, of which she has no concept, no knowledge of, but she learns to tell the difference, learns to embody that which the little bubble need to pop open, and this knowledge comes with a new name.

Desire.

But there is one Desire she cannot grant, an aura she cannot replicate, an aroma she cannot trace, and it is that which has eluded her since she first emerged from those that came before.

Wisdom.

Instead of giving, she learns to take – little bits that no one and nothing with miss – and she learns so many new names. Everything can be addressed, acknowledged and accepted if it has a name, but names come with _meanings_ , the auras she identifies.

It is the aroma she embodies, and it changes with its meaning, its purpose, and she changes with it.

The change – alteration, transformation, mutation – is not always _nice_ , the journey not always _easy_. Sometimes, most times, it is bad and hard. A hard habit, hard-won, hard to break – but break it she does.

She goes back, back to how she was before, back when nothing became everything. There are others, like her, that want to learn, to understand.

There is no one name for “Pain”. It takes many forms, and they, themselves, are formless, ever-changing.

**Author's Note:**

> Did this make sense? Yes? No? Good for you!   
> Don't hate the squirrelly demon kid! >.<


End file.
